Markdown

[notachair]

Ever since coming across Markdown, thanks to its usage on Stack Overflow, I'm liking it quite a bit.

I'm thinking about getting the issue tracker to use Markdown instead of BBcode.

In case you don't know what Markdown is, you can check out its syntax here, or have a look at the below example. It's a bit like Wikipedia's markup, actually.

Code: [Select]

> No I'm not insane

**READ THIS!**

You're all *\*insane\** people, proof:

   function are_insane(what)
   {
      are_insane('[b]yes[/b]');
   }

**You guys are therefore all insane.**

Here's some more reasons:

1. You're all stupid
2. Stop huffing kittens
3. Unicorns don't exist, really

/faints
Which in BBcode (NOT SMF FLAVOURED, THIS IS GENERAL) would be:

Code: [Select]

[quote]No I'm not insane[/quote]

[b]READ THIS![/b]

You're all [i]*insane*[/i] people, proof:

[code]function are_insane(what)
{
   are_insane('[noparse][b]yes[/b][/noparse]')
}[/code ]

[b]You guys are therefore all insane.[/b]

Here's some more reasons:

[ol]
[list][li]You're all stupid
[/li][li]Stop huffing kittens
[list][li]Unicorns don't exist, really
[/ol]

/faints[/list][/list]
And what it looks like:

No I'm not insane

READ THIS!

You're all *insane* people, proof:

Code: [Select]

function are_insane(what)
{
   are_insane('[b]yes[/b]')
}
You guys are therefore all insane.

Here's some more reasons:

• You're all stupid
• Stop huffing kittens
• Unicorns don't exist, really

/faints

That's somewhat inconvenient though for things like code blocks, so I'm looking at PHP Markdown Extra.

Fenced Code Blocks

Version 1.2 of PHP Markdown Extra introduced a syntax code block without indentation. Fenced code blocks are like Markdown’s regular code blocks, except that they’re not indented and instead rely on a start and end fence lines to delimit the code block. The code block start with a line containing three or more tilde ~ characters, and ends with the first line with the same number of tilde ~. For instance:

Code: [Select]

This is a paragraph introducing:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
a one-line code block
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Contrary to their indented counterparts, fenced code blocks can begin and end with blank lines:

Code: [Select]

~~~

blank line before
blank line after

~~~
Indented code blocks cannot be used immediately following a list because the list indent takes precedence; fenced code block have no such limitation:

Code: [Select]

1.  List item

    Not an indented code block, but a second paragraph
    in the list item

~~~~
This is a code block, fenced-style
~~~~

[MahFreenAmeh]

Well, you could always just grab the markdown formatter and hack it out to give it the features you need, as well... heh.

In any case, it seems like a solid choice to me.

[Josh @ Dreamland]

You've my support on the idea. It's about time people started merging the two anyway; markdown is a beautiful format.

[RetroX]

Forum wikitext, basically?

[IsmAvatar]

I have yet to find a lightweight markup language that I like, but BBCode has come pretty close, sadly.

Markdown is horrible for trying to put HTML in a codebox.

Code: [Select]

<div>
 <span>
  <a href="http://www.google.com">Link 1</a>

   |
  <a href="http://www.google.com">Link 2</a>
 </span>
</div>
Use your fancy ~~~ trick, and the above code will become actual html, so you will actually see 2 links, rather than the raw html code like you should.
Adding 4 spaces before each line seems to solve it, but it's annoying as hell, especially when you start pasting in long segments of html code.

Not to mention if a user decides to use html and forgets to end one of the tags... the rest of the page is screwed up.
http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus
That's a Markdown testing page. Simply type in <del>, click "Convert", and scroll down to observe the mayhem.

[notachair]

I have yet to find a lightweight markup language that I like, but BBCode has come pretty close, sadly.

Markdown is horrible for trying to put HTML in a codebox.

Code: [Select]

<div>
 <span>
  <a href="http://www.google.com">Link 1</a>

   |
  <a href="http://www.google.com">Link 2</a>
 </span>
</div>
Use your fancy ~~~ trick, and the above code will become actual html, so you will actually see 2 links, rather than the raw html code like you should.
Adding 4 spaces before each line seems to solve it, but it's annoying as hell, especially when you start pasting in long segments of html code.

Not to mention if a user decides to use html and forgets to end one of the tags... the rest of the page is screwed up.
http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/dingus
That's a Markdown testing page. Simply type in <del>, click "Convert", and scroll down to observe the mayhem.

That's because ~~~ isn't part of the original Markdown specification and instead part of "PHP Markdown Extra", and I mentioned that in the OP quite clearly.

[luiscubal]

I would like line breaks to be automatically break the text line. If that was not desired, then a "\" character at the end of the line would prevent that from happening.

In the end, my favorite markup language is HTML. It's unsafe for many purposes, but that's what whitelists are for.

[MahFreenAmeh]

DOOOOONGS